By Emma Deakin
Creative release and creative block. Two sides of the same coin, that many of us may experience at some point with whatever creative journey we find ourselves on. For me, lately, I think I’ve been inside a creative block…
So today I began something. Something I have done before. You’ve probably heard of it. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It’s a 12-week daily course in “discovering and recovering your creative self.”
First encountered back in 2004 when I was a freshie out of drama school, but admittedly I never finished it – got about three quarters through. It must have helped to some extent back then given 2004 was the year I mustered the courage to buy a one-way ticket to London. Where I subsequently spent more than 10 years, cutting my teeth producing, writing and performing with a theatre company I founded.
Today it begins, I embark on the journey again, 18 years later. Woah!
My creative self has been in need of a recovery. I gratefully moved away from full time producing into a more diverse freelance space during 2019 in order to inhabit my creative self, more. Not to say that producing is not creative, but as a full-time job it was not enough ‘creative’ for me. Despite the act of breaking out of the producing-grind into something more open and varied, not much creative output has taken place. Though some pretty massive life events interrupted my intended flow…
One was Covid (enough said).
The other, and something that is sitting with me more deeply, in my heart was, Grief. Specifically, my mother’s illness and death. And two miscarriages (all up I’ve had three).
Grief is a fallow time I suppose. And there is much value within the fallow, slower, hibernating times. I know this, but until recently I probably knew it mostly on a theoretical level, rather than a lived one. This is because my impatience often rails against a slower rhythm. Those who know me well, know my tendency leans toward a quicker pace – I have been likened in the past to the Ever-ready Battery Bunny! Learning to… slow… has been the journey.
A good friend (thank you Vicky) sent me some of her beautiful wisdom about grief soon after my second miscarriage and my mother’s death (they happened within days of each other);
Grief is unfathomable.
Best not to try.
Just give it the reigns for a while.
It’ll put you to bed.
Take you out in the sunshine.
Don’t rush anything.
My Buddhist practice (I’ve practiced Nichiren Buddhism for nearly 12 years) teaches that there is value in everything we encounter in our lives – everything – the good, bad and ugly!
My third miscarriage began on my birthday earlier this month. I love birthdays! I’ve always celebrated and relished my birthday. I think it’s so important to do this, to celebrate our own lives, that we’re still here, living this life. In fact, to celebrate more and more as we get older is important to me, another year of life, how wondrous! This year my birthday was filled with heartbreak, for myself and my partner. But I can honestly say, that we ALSO celebrated. Celebrated alongside the heartbreak. Celebrated because life, in all its sorrow and joy, is a beautiful thing to treasure.
Isn’t life, and cultivating our innate creativity, about embracing EVERY SINGLE THING – especially the things that hurt us? I say YES to that. Laughing and wailing at the same time, I say YES! I continue to learn more and more that we really can find joy inside the deepest of suffering.
I was listening to a Buddhist podcast yesterday about an artist’s creative process, called Buddhability – it’s really great, check it out. Among the many wise treasures within this episode the artist being interviewed shared her idea of the Power of Small Moves. Meaning challenging whatever it is that is holding our creativity back in a ‘bit by bit’ manner, creating the life and work we are proudest of, no matter what.
Maybe I haven’t been creatively blocked at all. Perhaps it’s just a changing of the guard, a new process emerging in a new world.
Another pearl of wisdom from the podcast episode I listened to yesterday talked about action. The process of the Head, Heart and Hand. I can have loads of ideas (Head). Then really feel connected to those ideas, feel inspired, imagine all sorts (Heart). But if I don’t take any action (Hand), that is where ideas and inspiration remain, in my head or my heart, stuck. Taking action, no matter how small it may seem, is the learning here. I need to remind myself of this.
Guess that’s why I’m writing this blog. A manifestation of the power of one small move. And another, and another, and another… culminating into a flow that is right for me. Re-discovering my creative self in afresh is what I’ve realised I need to do, continuously. And course doing this with patience. No need to rush.